Yo welcome back to Thug Notes. This week we searching for answers at the bottom
of a bottle with The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway.
After World War 1, stunna Jake Barnes spending all his time in Paris sippin
joose and writing- something I like to call the good life.
One night while he throwin back some drank with a brutha named Robert Cohn,
Jake peeps some fine dame he used to holler at named Brett Ashley.
Even though they still got a thang for each other, Jake know that this girl too
wild for him to handle. See Jake got his junk straight fu**ed up during the war and ain’t
no little blue pills gonna fix it.
To make things worse, Jake ain’t the only one mackin’ on Brett.
Ever since she walked in to that club, Cohn’s eyes have been straight GLUED to her ass.
And he don’t give a damn that she’s bout to marry some thug named Mike Campbell.
Ain’t no thang though, cuz Brett drops out of Jake’s life like she always do,
and heads to San Sebastian for a bit.
Couple weeks later, Jake, Brett, and some homies decide they gonna hit up a
bullfighting festival up in Pamplona. But before they leave, Brett tells Jake on the
down low that she was hoin it up with Cohn that whole time she was in San Sebastian.
Ooh-wee!
During the festival, this whole gang of white folk peep some young hood named
Romero who got the whole bullfighting game SOLD UP. Brett got her eyes on this stud,
and it’s not long before they start doin the nasty.
Next day Cohn start flippin sh** demanding to know where Brett is, and straight
bitch-slaps Mike and Jake. When Jake comes to, he learns that Cohn found Romero hot in
bed with Brett and laid a whoop on his ass. Eventually Brett and Romero
peace out and hit the road together.
But it ain’t long before Brett calls Jake to Madrid sayin she
dropped Romero and be flying solo again.
On their way out, Brett say that her and Jake could have had a ballin time together.
Jake just responds: “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
If you wanna go hard at this fiesta, you best peep game at the two quotes
that start this book. The first is from dat gnarly beezy Gertrude Stein sayin
“You are all a lost generation.”
Old Gerty givin a shout out to all dem peeps scarred
by the fu**ed up sh** of World War I.
For example, Brett was a nurse during the war and watched her man die,
only to marry some weak-ass wife-beater. So our girl ended up with some serious emotional
baggage that jacked up her ability to connect with otha playas in a meaningful way.
Now Jake’s scars ain’t no joke neither. Cuz of the war, Jake sporting some busted
up family jewels which means that he can’t have no kids. A generation is literally lost,
son.
Hemingway takes dat theme and thugs it up all biblical-like with his second quote:
Ashes to ashes, playa. We not only gettin the novel’s title from Ecclesiastes’s heezy,
but it also sayin that ideas and values don’t go on forever.
Like Jake say, even a fine philosophy ain’t sh** in five years.
Dub-Dub 1 did more than just stack a lot of bodies. It also killed homies’s
beliefs in the most sacred of things- even love, playa.
That thug Cohn ain’t got nothin but old-school romantic love for Brett.
But truth is, chasin dat love only makin him get shwasted and act all cray-cray.
Cuz in the shadow of World War I, romantic love ain’t the real deal no mo, partna-
cuz without the old code, people gotta invent their own.
Just look at all dem boys fightin for Brett’s fine self. Not only do they
compare her to the ancient temptress Circe from Greek myth, but peeps straight up worship her.
Even though this book be filled wit a bunch of white people dancing and
gettin wasted on the reg, they ain’t got no true happiness. Cuz on the real, the world
is capable of such evil, that these playas ain’t never gonna find the meaning they’re looking for.
Looks like they just doomed to keep sippin drank and jackin around as they keep searching.
Yo thanks for tuning in, playas. And feel free to find meaning
in some Thug Notes swag. A fine philosophy indeed!